Penny Johnson’s Companions in Conflict: Animals in Occupied Palestine offers an engaging—yet nevertheless flawed—presentation of the lives of many common and noteworthy species of anymal1 living under occupation in Palestine, principally within the West Bank. These range from the cow to the ibex, and from the hyena to the donkey and beyond. Johnson’s book is centred squarely within the field of human-anymal relations, meaning that it focuses primarily on the interactions between and the shared lives of humans and their anymal cousins. She adopts this perspective in order to draw attention to an oft-neglected aspect of intersocietal strife and violence—the impact this has on anymals. Anymals live among us and are not immune to the material and socioeconomic conditions around us. If one country bombs another, those bombs do not discriminate based on species, nor does the impact of economic sanctions end where finding money for vet bills begins. Johnson’s central objective here is to identify the specific ways in which this shared inter-species reality manifests in Palestine. These range from large mammals being unable to cross the Israeli Apartheid Wall, and therefore seeing their numbers dwindle due to separation from their mates, to a camel being arrested by the Israeli authorities for not possessing the appropriate permit. Companions in Conflict is the first book-length consideration of the human-anymal relations present in occupied Palestine, and whilst largely contemporary in focus, Johnson frequently weaves in longer-term historical contexts where relevant.

In writing Companions in Conflict, Johnson draws upon her lived experience and anecdotes from residing in Palestine ever since immigrating there three decades ago. She is a researcher at Birzeit University’s Institute of Women’s Studies, where she co-edits the annual Review of Women’s Studies, and is an associate editor of the Jerusalem Quarterly. Among her previous works is Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home, for which she won the prestigious Palestine Book Award in 2013.2 As such, Johnson is more than qualified to cover Palestinian society in a credible, informed manner. She even has previous experience publishing on anymal issues within the region, having written the article ‘Take My Camel: The Disappearing Camels of Jerusalem and Jaffa’ for the Jerusalem Quarterly’s fifty-third issue. It is to be noted that despite this article sharing a title and topic with the first chapter of Companions in Conflict, the latter is not merely a reproduction of the former.

Introduction: Common Lives

The book is divided into eight chapters—each of which examines the circumstances of one or several thematically related species—plus an introduction and a conclusion. The introduction opens by reiterating the assertion implied by the book’s title, namely that anymals are Palestinians’ ‘companions in conflict,’ before proceeding to outline the political and personal backdrop against which Johnson is writing.3 The reader is then acquainted with the various species of anymal featured in the following chapters. Regardless of the amusing alliteration, describing anymals as the ‘companions in conflict’ of the Palestinian people and those who, like Johnson, have immigrated there is problematic on two levels. Firstly, the word “conflict” implies a symmetry in power between and impact upon Israel and Israelis, and Palestine and Palestinians, however, this is simply not the case. Of course, the typical name for the ongoing military, political, and economic struggle between Israel and Palestine is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and hence it would have perhaps been unfeasible for Johnson to use any other terminology. That said, she should have been explicit throughout the book that it is Israel that dominates in this so-called conflict and Palestinians of all species4 who suffer most from it. Nevertheless, she does highlight a multitude of injustices perpetrated against Palestine by Israel, right from the opening pages. These include the administrative fragmentation and occupation of the West Bank, and the unjust military court system by which Palestinian humans living there are tried.5 Moreover, anymals are seldom humans’ ‘companions’ in anything, anywhere in the world, and Palestine is no exception—even if Israeli policy harms Palestine’s anymals through similar mechanisms as it does its humans. Just as is the case in Israel, the United Kingdom, Thailand, and Canada, Palestinian society is speciesist and oppresses anymals, with the exception of a small minority of anymal liberationists. It is certainly true that the occupation hinders Palestinians’ ability to effectuate anymal liberation by restricting their time, and financial and other resources, however we cannot deny the reality of anymal exploitation there.

Take My Camel: The Vanishing Camels of Jaffa and Jerusalem

The first chapter traces the history of the camel in Palestine, and the way in which this anymal has disappeared from urban landscapes in recent decades. It does so initially with the story of Kojak, a working camel owned by the Abu Hawa family, who was banished from Jerusalem and imprisoned for some time by the Israeli authorities, officially due to permit and insurance concerns. But in general, as the book notes, it was innovations like the motor vehicle that displaced camels—gradually surpassing them in utility vis-à-vis the transport of goods since around 1925. Johnson then advances the notion of ‘the repressed camel memory syndrome,’ a psychological phenomenon by which urban Palestinians who grew up around camels seem to selectively overlook these memories.6 She convincingly explains that this phenomenon is caused by the prevalent association of camels with ‘primitive’ (rural) modes of life, and Orientalist stereotypes of Arabs in Western media.7 According to Johnson, this is further exacerbated by the attention city-dwelling Palestinians give to the loss of (middle-class) urban culture since the 1948 Nakba, which explains why rural Palestinians are not so afflicted by this ailment. The chapter then concludes with an account of how the British Mandate’s desire to make Palestine in its own image caused a crusade against camels, who were branded over-grazers, before recounting the history of camels in warfare within the country. As Johnson notes, the anti-camel campaigns were ‘underwritten by a distinctly sour view of both camels and their Bedouin owners’.8 In other words, racism and speciesism are inextricably linked: only the white Briton was thought capable of liberating Palestine from its perceived environmental backwardness, and since camels were associated with Bedouins through ownership, this encouraged their demonization. Crucially missing from the opening chapter’s analysis of working camels—in wartime or otherwise—is any sense that it would be desirable to lift these anymals out of their predicament. It thus becomes apparent that although Companions in Conflict provides the necessary material for the reader to understand the barriers to anymal liberation in Palestine, the reader takes this leap without the author.

The proceeding chapter opens with the story of Abu Hassan, a hyena living in the only zoo in the West Bank, located in Qalqilya. Abu Hassan does not garner much favour there, just as hyenas in general are unpopular in Palestine. Throughout Palestinian folklore, Johnson contends, hyenas are portrayed as an existential threat to humans. Their glare can apparently bewitch and paralyze—although they are curiously also viewed as a cowardly anymal. The hyena, which is endangered in Palestine, largely due to habitat loss, is so feared that parents warn their children not to come home late, lest they become hyena food. This panic means that, when sighted, hyenas are often killed, something that Johnson identifies is much to the delight of the Israeli media, who can exploit the killing as evidence that Palestinians are regressive anymal-haters. By stereotyping Palestinians in this way, Israeli media outlets simultaneously imply that Israelis are not that which they so roundly condemn. Although nowhere in this book is the practice mentioned by name, it is known as veganwashing—the process by which Israeli institutions use veganism and anymal rights to obscure the abuse of the Palestinian people. If Palestinians truly are as evil as the veganwashed narrative purports, then they are not to be believed. If, at the same time, Israelis are a moral people, they can be trusted, and the Apartheid Wall, for example, then seems more than justified. For this reason, I was pleased to see Johnson give space to Ibrahim Odeh’s voice. Odeh is a spokesperson for the Palestine Wildlife Society, and he and his organization’s condemnation of one hyena slaying that was picked up by the Israeli media as ‘murder’ helps challenge the image of the backwards Palestinian.9 In doing so, he equally disrupts the attempt at veganwashing. Ironically, it is the Israeli-built Apartheid Wall that pushes Palestinians and hyenas into closer proximity and thus engenders the violence against the latter. In Johnson’s words, the Wall ‘has caused ecological fragmentation,’ by preventing large mammals like our hyena from roaming freely.10 If it is any consolation, Johnson informs us that thanks to lobbying by Israeli environmentalists, at least smaller anymals are able to squeeze through specially constructed zigzag passages. The joint experience of restricted movements, and loss of land, food and family due to the Wall provides perhaps the narrow sense in which Palestinian anymals and humans are companions in conflict. This is, no doubt, the point Johnson intended to make, although the terminology she uses does not always make this obvious.

Flocks by Day: Goats, Sheep, and Shepherds Under Threat; I Wish I Was a Donkey… Or Do I?; Where Are We Going, Rivka?: Cows in an Occupied Economy

With the hyenas left behind, Johnson turns her attention in three consecutive chapters to working anymals—whether their work be in transport, or in being or producing food. Once again, there is no clear condemnation of or suggestions for how these practices might be overcome given the material conditions present in Palestine, but clues are found in the text. Strangely, for a book about anymals, more words are dedicated to the consequences of the threats menacing working anymals on their owners, rather than on the anymals themselves. First is the turn of goats and sheep (along with their shepherds). Johnson begins with a somewhat overly detailed account of how—like camels—sheep and especially goats were branded over-grazers by the British Mandate and their numbers were thus restricted. The nascent State of Israel maintained the British evaluation of these species. From here, we once again learn that, at least in the Palestinian context, anymals owned by a marginalized group do not solely suffer the oppression associated with being raised to produce milk, for instance. They also often end up as the targets of the racism directed at that group. Johnson writes of Israeli government confiscations of Palestinian livestock, and Israeli settlers murdering sheep owned by Palestinian farmers. On one particularly graphic occasion, she tells of settlers from an illegal outpost murdering ten sheep in February 2018. Although incredibly difficult to achieve, the solution here is obvious, which is no doubt why Johnson does not explicitly name it. We must end the occupation and thereby remove the conditions that foster this racism, and which place the Israeli authorities and illegal settlers in Palestinians of all species’ vicinity.

The same lesson, albeit from a different angle, is taught as the book comes to focus on donkeys. Here, we learn that, because the Israeli government has closed many rural agricultural roads in Area C of the West Bank, Palestinian farmers have begun to use donkeys for travel again, in place of the automobile. Clearly, the donkeys would not be exploited were it not for this fact of the occupation. Moreover, the poverty many Palestinian humans face, something heavily exacerbated by the occupation, means that donkeys—and other anymals—are denied adequate veterinary medicine.11 In the words of one Bedouin herder, as reported by Ahmad Safi of the Palestinian Animal League, “When my child is ill, I give him herbs and keep him warm, should I take my donkey to the doctor?”12 Even so, poverty will persist under capitalism even after the occupation has been ended, and thus the second gleaning from Johnson’s work is that capitalism too must be defeated. Finally, the chapter offers insight into the psychological impact of the occupation on attitudes towards anymals. In 2003, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) composed a letter to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, asking that he ensure anymals are not used as weapons of war in Palestine. This came after Hamas operatives had attacked a bus stop near Jerusalem by detonating explosives concealed in a donkey’s pack. Only the donkey died. Israelis were outraged at the time—did PETA care more about the life of a donkey than their lives? Palestinian commentators were too busy dealing with the Second Intifada to notice. Told about the letter many years later, Johnson’s Palestinian nephew Aziz reacted with an ‘incredulous laughter’.13 His friends could not believe the tale. Johnson concludes that in the face of constant violence in Palestine-Israel and the perception, justified or not, that each people is an existential threat to the other, the deaths of anymals seem trivial. In other words, the material conditions expose the almost universal human tendency towards a speciesist undervaluing of anymal life—certainly a convincing analysis.

Chapter Five, which is dedicated to cows, tells the story of how anymals can become not just intertwined with, but the central object of strife (and solidarity) within the overall struggle between Israel and Palestine. The chapter follows eighteen cows sold to the residents of Beit Sahur in 1988 by a kibbutz sympathetic to their wish to break their dependence on the Israeli dairy giant, Tnuva. The Israeli military authorities and Beit Sahur’s residents then played a game of cat and mouse with the cows’ location, as they had been deemed ‘illegal’.14 Johnson recounts the tale with reference to the film The Wanted 18, which is based on the same events. This section does not add much to the analysis for our purposes as anymal liberationists—instead it focuses on how Israeli restrictions on the Palestinian economy damage the Palestinian dairy industry. There are, nevertheless, two interesting take-aways: firstly, the story provides yet more evidence that racist stereotypes of an anymal’s so-called owner can extend to them. Just as Palestinians are perceived as a security risk by Israelis, the military governor who came looking for the eighteen described them as “dangerous for the security of the state of Israel”.15 Secondly, Johnson reports on the fate of Palestine-Israel’s water buffalo, the ‘cow’s majestic cousin’,16 which, to her, typifies the damage the ‘Zionist ideology of redemption of the land’17 has done to anymal life. This is the notion that it is for Jews to “reclaim” and “develop” historic Palestine.18 In the region, the water buffalo and numerous other species have become extinct because Israel drained their habitat, the Huleh swamps. This was done ostensibly to create agricultural land and eradicate malaria. Although a Marxist would take a materialist view of this development, in opposition to Johnson’s idea-driven stance, it is depressing—but noteworthy—that Israeli and wider human attempts at ‘remoulding the environment’ have often ended catastrophically for anymals.19

A Conspiracy of Wild Boars; The Howl of the Jackal; Still Wild: Gazelles, Ibexes, and Wolves

Johnson devotes chapters six to eight to wild anymals, beginning with a chapter on wild boars, who are likewise the object of much “conflict” between Israelis and Palestinians. Unsurprisingly but still disappointingly, human concerns take precedence over anymal ones in these chapters. In recent years, wild boar numbers in the West Bank have exploded, we are informed. Palestinian farmers complain that these boars destroy their crops and town-dwellers are frightened for their children’s safety. Since settlers cause chaos in the occupied West Bank, this has given rise to somewhat far-fetched tales of settlers dispersing these wild pigs—and even a leopard—near Palestinian farms, towns, and villages. The most likely explanation is that wild boars are forced closer to Palestinian settlements for three reasons. Firstly, increases in human rubbish attract wild pigs searching for food. Moreover, Johnson cites the Palestine Wildlife Society’s Imad Atrash in blaming the Apartheid Wall for forcing the boars nearer to Palestinian dwellings. But the most valuable revelation from the chapter is the extent of the impact of Israeli water and sewage policy on the distribution of wild boars. Sewage from the Ariel settlement complex runs off into water sources near the Palestinian city of Salfit. Moreover, on occasion, impoverished Palestinians are paid to dump waste from Ariel in said water sources. This kills wildlife and draws the boars to the resultant ‘delicious detritus.’20 Further compounding the issue, Johnson reports that the Israeli authorities have repeatedly scuppered plans from Salfit’s water engineer, Saleh Afaneh, to construct a sewage treatment plant which would somewhat address the boar issue. Tragically, boars are now being poisoned in the West Bank to prevent them from threatening human beings and their crops. This tells a global tale in its Palestinian form. In the United Kingdom, seagull culls are frequently proposed, due to attacks on pets and frustrations around seagulls stealing food and making a mess of rubbish bags.21 This misses the fact that it is human overfishing, willingness to feed gulls, and ever-increasing production of rubbish that causes the gull behaviours we identify as pestilent.22 Clearly, Palestinians living under occupation have very little recourse to alter Israeli actions, however, it is nevertheless upsetting to see innocent anymals pay with their lives for human misconduct.

Chapter Seven, the shortest of the eight, pertains to the jackal. Here, Johnson briefly details concentrations of jackals in Jerusalem’s Gazelle Valley, on an ecological bridge over a highway in the Galilee, and near Ramallah, as well as the varying levels of success achieved by Israeli government jackal culls. The latter is, of course, something we need to be aware of and oppose. She then tracks the history of the jackal’s literary representation, from Kalila wa Dimna, an ancient collection of stories featuring the two eponymous jackals—Kalila and Dimna—as narrators, to Amos Oz’s 1966 Where the Jackals Howl. The latter, according to Johnson’s summary, is a short story collection by a Jewish-Israeli author which follows a kibbutz menaced by both Arabs and jackals. Arabs are dehumanized and conflated with jackals—both ‘besiege’ the kibbutz and ‘stink of decay’.23 This is another example of the interconnected nature of racism and speciesism: since anymals are almost universally considered sub-human, the easiest way to depict another racial group as inferior is to equate them with a particularly disparaged species of anymal. From Johnson’s exploration of literature featuring jackals, she identifies that jackals are often portrayed as tricksters in both Arab and Israeli literature and beyond, even though this small carnivore was at one time worshipped as a god in Egypt. Whilst, as before, we must extrapolate our own conclusions from Johnson’s work, this succinctly exposes the nature of speciesism. Our negative stereotypes about anymals are very often not rooted in fact but are the product of ideology and thus subject to change.

Companions in Conflict’s final chapter evaluates the threats posed to gazelles, ibexes, and wolves. Unlike some of the book’s other chapters, Chapter Eight is primarily concerned with the fates of anymals and is, therefore, one of its most potent treatments. These species have indeed been pushed out of their habitats by expanding human habitation—both Palestinian and Israeli—but hunting, the opening of a quarry in Wadi Al-Quff, and Dead Sea sinkholes appear as the most significant concerns. A significant contributor to the gazelle’s classification as endangered in Palestine-Israel is the mass hunting that occurred during the two World Wars. The crisis is not solely contained to the past, however, as the popularity of hunting in Palestine has undergone a resurgence since the Oslo Accords. Johnson explains that hunting, especially of gazelles and birds is something of a tradition in Palestine, although the practice was heavily restricted from 1967 when Israel ordered Palestinians to hand their firearms over. Many hid their guns within wells, only for they or their relatives to recover them after Oslo II ended the direct military occupation in 1995. Members of the Palestinian Security Services, also founded in the mid-1990s, seized the opportunity to use their service firearms for hunting until their commanders restricted personal usage of service arms in the last decade. These restrictions were lobbied for by Palestinian NGOs and the head of the Palestinian Authority’s Environmental Quality Agency. A similar ban was imposed upon their Israeli counterparts in the late 1960s, also to combat the widespread phenomenon of hunting, which has seen gazelle numbers somewhat recover. And whilst hunting with unregistered firearms should technically result in at least a small fine, Palestinian judges are understandably reluctant to fine their fellow citizens in such cases, as many claim they hunt to eat. This further justifies my assertion that in Palestine and globally, economic liberation of the proletariat must accompany anymal liberation, something which in Palestine, as previously remarked, is seriously hampered by the occupation. The occupation, plus another economically oppressive institution, capitalism, are implicated in damage to the gazelle population in another way. Johnson reveals that in her correspondence with Mazin Qumisyeh, the mammal consultant on the Wadi Al-Quff Nature Reserve’s 2014 management plan, it was made apparent that the reserve ‘is not a protected area’, because much of the surrounding land is in Area C. This means it is under complete Israeli control; Palestinian institutions cannot conduct preservation work there. A quarry and industrial developments in the area are also thought to disrupt wildlife.

We next learn vital information about the ibex and the wolf. For the ibex, Dead Sea sinkholes are the most existential threat. Due to the ‘massive diversion’ and damming of the Jordan River, the Dead Sea’s only water source save for rainfall, plus Israeli and Jordanian commercial mineral extraction efforts, there are now at least six thousand sinkholes in the Dead Sea region. The rate at which these sinkholes are produced is alarming, as they numbered zero a mere forty years ago. The sinkholes are created as salt deposits left behind when the Dead Sea retreats collapse into craters which can measure up to 150 feet deep and 300 feet wide. They pose a threat to ibexes, not just because they can fall to their deaths, but because of the proposed strategy to combat them. The Israel Land Authority suggested fencing off the date palm plantations where ibexes graze so as to cordon the craters off, something which would have cut them off from a crucial food source. Thankfully, this fence has not yet materialized.

Finally, Johnson was surprised to learn that wolves are performing relatively well in Palestine-Israel and especially in the Golan Heights, even though, outside of nature reserves, Israeli cattle farmers are permitted to kill them. She does remark, however, that there has been somewhat of a frenzy in the Israeli media surrounding wolf attacks. In September 2017, local and international media reported that there had been ten wolf attacks in four months, including on children, although no one was killed. The media described the wolves as ‘brazen’ and a universal threat to all children.24 Intelligently countering this view, Johnson cites the Israeli Nature and Parks Authority, who claim that human behaviour is largely to blame, as campers feed wolves and do not store waste correctly. This encourages them to approach us when they would not have done so even fifty years ago. She summarises the issue with the media panic very convincingly: ‘humans have… mistaken this landscape for something that is theirs alone, rather than a wild place shared with other predators requiring caution and respect’.25

Conclusion: The Worst Zoo in the World: Lives in Common?

In addition to summarising the above-reviewed chapters, Johnson’s conclusion evaluates the transfer of Laziz, a Bengal tiger, and other anymals from the Khan Yunis zoo. This zoo has been ‘dubbed the “worst zoo in the world.”’26 She is rightly critical of the ‘Orwellian statements’ made by the head of the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit which praised his government’s work in facilitating Laziz’s relocation to South Africa.27 Citing the journalist Amira Hass, Johnson concludes that it is deeply hypocritical for Israeli officials to claim to fight for anymals in Gaza when they are silent on their government creating immense human (and anymal) suffering there. What she did not include, is that this apparent concern for anymals in Gaza is part of the veganwashing strategy outlined previously in this review. She then gives a voice to Ahmad Safi, the Palestinian Animal League’s co-founder, so that he can explain his group’s vision of a holistic Palestine, one of “the land, and the animals, and the plants, our whole environment.”28 To me, this is the most powerful quote in the book. Thankfully, Companions in Conflict includes many such contributions from knowledgeable Palestinians and does not make the common mistake of citing solely Western commentators. Another astute contribution from Johnson’s conclusion is her reminder that we must reclaim nature as something to be in touch with from the environment as a problem to overcome.

Companions in Conflict provides many valuable insights, and in cases where its analysis is lacking in depth or is otherwise incompatible with an anymal liberationist stance, it does the legwork so that we can take it further. One notable weakness is that Johnson spends far too long in a book ostensibly about “animals” (in the non-human sense) discussing human troubles in Palestine-Israel. Many a book has and will be written about that crucial subject, and there must be a human component to any study of human-anymal relations. Nevertheless, it was a shame that even in the one space dedicated to anymals, they found themselves too often marginalized. I equally found myself frustrated by Johnson’s refusal to use in-text citations or endnotes. She instead relies on a “Sources and Resources” section at the end of the book, which does not make it clear which source pertains to which piece of information. Regardless of my criticisms, Johnson has provided us with a springboard from which scholarship on the plight of anymals in Palestine-Israel might blossom.

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Following Lisa Kemmerer, I employ the term “anymal” to refer to any and all animals which are not homo sapiens. It is a contraction of the words “any” and “animal” and its usage avoids the dualistic connotations present in phrases such as “non-human animal.” See generally Lisa Kemmerer, ‘Verbal Activism: “Anymal”’, Society & Animals 14, no. 1 (2006): 9–14, https://doi.org/10.1163/156853006776137186.

I refer to ‘Palestinians of all species,’ despite understanding that anymals do not share human notions of national identity, because it is their geographical Palestinianness and others’ reading of them as Palestinian which makes them susceptible to Israeli violence. In other instances, I use “Palestinians” to refer solely to Palestinian humans in the interest of avoiding needless repetition, but only where this meaning is obvious from the context.

E.g., Johnson, xi–xiii.

Ibid., 13–14.

Ibid., 13.

Ibid., 18.

Ibid., 43.

Ibid., 41.

See generally United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, ‘Report on UNCTAD Assistance to the Palestinian People: Developments in the Economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory’ (Geneva: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 1 September 2016), https://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/app2016d1_en.pdf.

Johnson, 101.

Ibid., 93.

Ibid., 105.

Ibid., 109.

Ibid., 111.

Ibid., 112.

See generally Dan Leon, ‘The Jewish National Fund: How the Land Was “Redeemed”’, Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics, and Culture 12, no. 4 (2005), https://pij.org/articles/410.

Nick McAlpin is a freelance journalist and Cambridge Trust UK Masters scholar on the University of Cambridge’s MPhil Social Anthropology program. He writes about British and Middle Eastern politics and social movements and his academic focus is on the ethics and politics of animal activism. He has previously worked with organizations such as the Palestinian Animal League and the Sulala Society for the Care of Stray Animals, among others.
Follow him on Twitter: @NickGMcAlpin